Social networking impairs perception of time, says study
Posted on: 17/Feb/2017 12:14:48 PM
Researchers from the University of Kent in the UK have warned that using the social networking site or surfing the web may impair your perception of time.
According to the study, Facebook-related stimuli can lead to an underestimate of time compared to general internet use, but that both lead to a distortion of time. The researchers monitored the responses of 44 people who were shown 20 images for varying amounts of time. Five of the images were associated with Facebook, five had more general internet associations with another ten as neutral `control` images. Those taking part had to say whether the image they had just seen had been visible for a short or long time. The key finding was that people tended to underestimate the time they had been looking at Facebook-related images to a greater extent than other more general internet related images, but that in both cases time was underestimated.
The findings are likely to have implications for future study into addictive behaviour. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
